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Robrogers
05-03-2006, 02:04 PM
My plant is about 12x16 inches and I have 2 fence poles for exaust stacks. The poles are 2 inch fence posts. I am still working out bugs, but I fired it up today and it went great for about an hour, then I think the exaust plugged with soot. Fire started coming out the bottom of the fire box like it wasn't venting any more. Do you think my 2 inch poles are not big enough?
BTY. Before it plugged up, I made about 1 gallon of diesel and used about 2 gallons of oil so that was great.
Also, The oil I got has a lot of antifreeze in it, could that contribute the the soot problem?
Oilguy
05-03-2006, 02:52 PM
No.. the soot problem is that the fire is getting too much oil and not enough air. When you have it burning right there will not be any smoke or soot. Having 2 2" pipe might not be enough size to draft enough air.. how tall are they? You may need another one.

OG
Robrogers
05-03-2006, 04:13 PM
The exaust pipes are 5 feet tall. I was thinking of removing them and replacing the two pieces of 2 inch pipe with a section of 6 inch stove pipe. That way I could get more air and remove them easier for cleaning.
I already have the 6 inch stove pipe just laying around so it's just a labor thing.
Oilguy
05-03-2006, 05:22 PM
That will work... What are you using for a burner??
OG
Robrogers
05-03-2006, 05:42 PM
I am using ramps like in the plans. They seem to work ok if I can just avoid the soot problem.
So do I want to leave the burner door wide open after I get the fire started or should it be closed slightly?
Oilguy
05-03-2006, 08:10 PM
I left mine cracked a bit but not wide open.. You will lose too much heat and you want all of that in the boiler. This is why a lot of us switched to a turk burner with forced air... easier to start and ran with out smoke when set right... but like the ramps.. they needed to be cleaned alot.
OG
Robrogers
05-04-2006, 05:51 PM
What is a Turk burner and where do I get one?
OiltoDiesel
05-04-2006, 06:12 PM
What is a Turk burner and where do I get one?

I don't know which is better, a Turk or Beckett burner. Maybe OG can let us know his opinion on this.

I bought a Beckett Burner off Ebay. This is one that is available on ebay:

http://cgi.ebay.com/beckett-burner-oil-burner-af-like-new-no-reserve_W0QQitemZ6056295013QQcategoryZ20598QQssPag eNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

If you want to see what a Beckett Burner looks like I posted a couple of pics in the gallery.

Gary